The Blank TR – Transit Message is a transversal project conceived by the association The Blank, based on the research of what it means nowadays “send a message”, “communicate”, “transit”.
TR is an abbreviation commonly used in Morse Code for Transit Message: -.-.
Never before communication has been as fluid as in our time: you can instantly be in contact with the other side of the world through multiple devices: phone, email, Skype, chat, smart phone and tablet. Yet there is almost no tangible trace of all this unceasing series of conversations and transferred and transited contents, if not hidden within the memories of the devices or among the liquid crystal displays.

Morse Code was a precursor of the contemporary protocols of digital communication: in the first half of the Nineteenth Century it became the standard for encoding information.
The cost of a telegraphed message depended on its length, thus were devised codes synthesizing entire messages – strategies that have continued to affect our contemporaneity until the advent of free communication.
From these analogical methods generates the road to digital methods: SMS, MMS, email, WhatsApp.

The project The Blank TR – Transit Message is based on a simple but fixed protocol. Selected international personalities are required to answer the question “What is a transit message?”, asked them on a paper support on which to express and impress their answer, writing, drawing, pasting or by any other method. Participants send the paper back to the sender, providing the suggestion of another possible participant.
The first results are received and processed, then sent back with analogous protocol to the recipients suggested by the first participants.

The final form of the project The Blank TR – Transit Message is a publication available for download and a limited number of hard copies.
Furthermore, the original papers exchanged via mail contribute to the self-financing of the project.

The Blank presents The Blank TR Pavilion, curated by Claudia Santeroni and Olga Vanoncini, under the patronage of Italian Cultural Institute of Tel Aviv.

The Blank TR Pavilion will take place on Sunday 2, Monday 3 and Tuesday 4 September 2018 during Beyond Words, video and performance festival curated by Liliana Orbach and hosted by Artspace Tel Aviv, Shvil HaMeretz 6.

Day 1: Sunday 2 Sept 2018
• (17.30–19.00) Screening “Focus on Flavia Mastrella”
Lecturer: Claudia Santeroni
Screening of a video by Flavia Mastrella and following overview on the artist’s practice. Flavia Mastrella (Anzi o, 1960) is an Italian visual artist who mainly operates in theatre direction and scenography design with her artistic partner and performer Antonio Rezza.
In early 2018 they received the Leone d’Oro award for their career.

• (20.00–21.30) Screening “Focus on Hanne Lippard”
Lecturer: Claudia Santeroni
Screening of a video by Hanne Lippard and following overview on the artist’s practice.Hanne Lippard (Milton Keynes, GB, 1984) is a Norwegian artist who mainly works with video and voice, which she uses as a way to convey the discrepancy between content and form.

• Ongoing: happening and exhibition

Day 2: Monday 3 Sept 2018
• (17.00-18.00) Workshop with kids and parents “Design and create your own letter writing set”
*Event open to kids and parents
Conductor: Olga Vanoncini
Creative workshop to create a letter writing set using different papers to build the set and decorate it with stencil, stickers, glitter and more. Including a slideshow about letters in history.

• (18.00-19.00) talk “Where is my message? – About being in between”
When the message in transit (TR) is a person: a conversation about people in transition and transitions of people in society and in personal life.
Olga Vanoncini Visual artist and educator
Fiammetta Martegani (Milano, Italy, 1981) Ph.D.in Anthropology and Curator at Eretz Israel Museum, Tel Aviv, Israel. She did her Postdoctoral Program in Cinema and Comparative Literature at Tel Aviv University, with a dissertation in Anthropology on the representation of the Israeli soldier in Israeli Art and Cinema.
Since 2009 she is a correspondent from Israel for Italian magazines and cultural radio programs and she combines projects between Anthropology and Art in Italy and in Israel. In 2015 she published her first novel: Life on Mars and in 2017 she published her Ph.D. research: The Israeli Defence Forces’ Representation in Israeli Cinema.

• (19.00-19.30) Performance “A final performance of a fax machine before it disappears”
What brought the revolution in the wired transmission media is moving away from the world. The fax will send its last messages.
The public is invited to come and to say goodbye.
Artist: Reut Asimini (1983, lives and works in Tel-Aviv), MFA from Hunter College in NYC and BFA from Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem.
Asimini is an interdisciplinary artist, working with painting, video installation and sculpture. Reflecting on different aspects of everyday life, her work explores how bodies perform in space and how they relate to subjects such as womanhood, cultural beliefs, traditions and behaviors. She sees art as a place of wishful-thinking and emphasizes the power of art works to reimagine the transformation of one’s life.

• Ongoing: happening and exhibition

The Blank TR Pavilion, curated by Claudia Santeroni and Olga Vanoncini will take place on Sunday 2, Monday 3 and Tuesday 4 September 2018 duringBeyond Words, video and performance festival curated by Liliana Orbach and hosted by Artspace Tel Aviv, Shvil HaMeretz 6.

• (19.30-20.00) Presentation: sound as transit message
Conductor: Hagit Emma Werner, independent curator and architect based in Tel Aviv. Her primary practice and research focuses on the “sonic event” and the perspective of listening. Among her curated projects are the exhibition series “composition for TimeSpace” (2017) co-curated with Tal Lanir, Songs of the next War (2016), Cave Study (2015) all in Tel Aviv Museum. Werner is also the founder and curator of SoundArtPassage (2013-2016) and is currently working on a new “Sound Space” to be open soon in Tel Aviv

• (20.30-22.00) live performance
Creating electronic soundscapes from improvisation and adaptation, the performance unites synthesized sound with live instruments and vocals. Original compositions are being dismembered and rearranged in a way that creates a unique experience for the here & now. The result is modulated through the emotion of the moment.
Artist: Yonatan Rukhman (Israel, 1976) artist and producer based in Tel Aviv, he has worked in a wide range of musical genres in Israel & Europe. With a classical background, he has witnessed the transformation of analog into digital and has experienced both composition and research. Upon returning to Israel he has started to release songs written and performed by him in Hebrew.
His latest single is Dimdumim: https://youtu.be/1I9aVeHUGX8

• Beyond Words party

• Ongoing: happening and exhibition

Curators Claudia Santeroni and Olga Vanoncini bring The Blank TR – Transit Message in tour to Tel Aviv in the form of TR Pavilion, a three days intensive workshop/performance/exhibition focused on the process. TR Pavilion is extended on a process lasting three days of talks, workshops, performances about art and the meaning of communication. All the materials produced are conveyed in an ongoing changing display and happening that constitutes the exhibition.

The Blank TR Pavilion will take place on Sunday 2, Monday 3 and Tuesday 4 September 2018 during Beyond Words, video and performance festival curated by Liliana Orbach and hosted by Artspace Tel Aviv, Shvil HaMeretz 6.

• Beyond Words – An international video & performance event.

Created and curated by Dr. Liliana Orbach
The many fields of creativity have used visuals that combine written and/or spoken words for many decades. With the development of the media, the transmission of explicit and also subliminal messages has become increasingly sophisticated and complex.Beyond Words focuses on the points of contact between the two means of expression, aiming to measure the degree of effectiveness, success or failure in communicating the desired content.Beyond Words seeks for the ways in which creators from different backgrounds manipulate the written/sounding word within the visual language, as a way to reach the world around them. The event, which includes a wide range of works, seeking to provide the platform for a
variety of interpretations, will be held during the first week of September 2018 at Artspace Tel Aviv. Its program include a symposium, video screenings, performances, workshops and encounters between creators, curators and local audiences.

• Artspace Tel Aviv non-profit foundation, bringing together dozens of artists who work in a unique area, located in southern Tel-Aviv, consisting of a remarkable concentration of approximately 300 active artists who work in the neighborhood, as well as many art galleries located there. The foundation operates as a gallery with a pluralistic approach, that holds dozens of exhibitions, artist walls, lectures, cultural events and more.
The gallery collaborates with different schools, also functioning as a meeting and activity spot for artists, curators and guests.

Liliana Orbach, interdisciplinary artist, independent curator and lecturer. Born in Argentina. Lives and woks in Tel Aviv. Her background includes a Masters Degree in Arts, earned at Call State University, Fullerton, USA and a PhD in Arts, earned at the Multimedia department of the Poznan Arts University, Poland. She is an active creator, who exhibits her works within Israel and also abroad. She has been invited to curate a variety of local / international art related programs, as part of events such as the video art
festival Loop-Barcelona, Spain, The Four Cultures Festival, Lodz, Poland, Cinetoro Experimental Film Festival, Cali, Colombia, among many others.

-Enrico Ghezzi, Film critic and Television Writer for La RAI. Italian – based in Rome, Italy.

-Nadeem Karkabi, Anthropologist, PhD at University of London, Fellow Member of The Martin Buber Society at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. Palestinian-Israeli – based in East Jerusalem, Palestine/Israel.

-Davide Luca, Geographer, PhD at the London School of Economics, 2016/17 Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Italian – based in Milan, Italy – London, UK and Istanbul, Turkey.

-Gabriela Vainsencher, Artist, Writes about art for Hyperallergic, Tohu Magazine, and The Huffington Post, MFA Candidate at Hunter College and Lecturer at Williams College. Argentinean-born Israeli – based in Brooklyn, USA.

-Chiara Vecchiarelli, Curator and Ph.D. at ENS Paris/University of Venice. Belgian – based in Paris, France.

The Blank TR – Transit Message
curated by Claudia Santeroni and Olga Vanoncini is a new transversal project conceived by the association The Blank, based on the research of what it means nowadays to “send a message”, “communicate”, “transit”.
TR is an abbreviation commonly used in Morse Code for Transit Message: -.-.
The project The Blank TR – Transit Message is based on a simple but fixed protocol. 22 international selected personalities are required to answer the question: “What is a transit message?”